There have been many efforts to use social media to sell merchandise, but these efforts have been haphazard and inconsistent. Usually, a merchant, either runs a sale on a particular product or promote other products by giving away excess inventory that they cannot sell on their social media web site. Disadvantageously, only people who subscribe to the merchant's social media site are ever informed about the product. This minimizes the sales potential for the merchant and does not allow them to target new potential buyers unless the offer is spread “by word of mouth” through social media.
Other efforts have been the standard advertising model of using the social media sites as a way of identifying a particular target audience based on age, gender and the usual demographics found in traditional marketing campaigns. All of these efforts have are lacking the ability to use the available information in a real-time effort
Therefore, there is a need for a system to match product supply with demand by identifying potential customers on social media and determining buying intent of each potential customer.